With the advent of high speed container filling machines, such as those used in filling coffee creamer containers, condiment containers, small serving dessert, fruit cups and yogurt containers, it has become very difficult for a machine operator to tend to all functions of the machine and, at the same time, maintain a sufficient number of containers in the filling machine's supply chutes. There is now available filling machines for filling coffee creamers which attain speeds of filling and sealing 1,000 containers per minute. In order to supply or maintain containers in supply chutes for machines of this nature, the operator would have to spend most of his time loading containers into the supply chutes.
It is common to obtain delivery of containers in bags where there may be several rows of stacked containers in each bag. In manually loading supply chutes for container filling machines, it has always been a problem in transferring the stacks of containers from the bags into the filling machine chutes and can often result in separation of the stacks and resultant loss of several containers by dropping them on the floor. With accidents of this nature, and in view of the demands in maintaining containers in the supply chutes, there is often the necessity of shutting down the filling machine until the container supply can be reinstated. Thus, high speed filling machines with manual loading of containers cannot conveniently operate at full capacity.
Another difficulty with existing filling machines is that the supply chutes are usually vertical. An approach to placing stacks of containers in the supply chutes is to drop the stacks of containers through the tops of the chutes to ensure a supply of containers. This limits the amount of containers in the chute, because of an operator's reach and is time consuming and can increase the possibility of accidents in placing stacks of containers into the supply chutes.
To avoid these problems, automation of the placement of the stacks of containers into the filling machine chutes would be advantageous. An approach to automating the supply of containers is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,077,180. Individual rows, one by one, are placed into hoppers provided on an upright conveyor system which conveys individual stacks of containers upwardly to an area which is aligned with tubes which lead to the filling machine chutes. The stacks of containers are pushed through the tubes downwardly into the chutes to provide a supply of containers.
With the requirement that the stacks of containers be loaded into the chute through the top, the overall height of the stack-loading mechanism becomes cumbersome. A complex arrangement is required to pick up individual rows of stacked containers and transport them to the upper level for loading into the chutes. At the upper level, the operator cannot observe the operation of pushing stacks of containers into the chutes, so that should one or more of the stacks jam in the hoppers or tubes which lead to the chutes, the problem can go unnoticed which may cause damage to the machine and block the supply of containers to the chute.
Since machines of this nature are used for packaging various types of foods, a semi-sterile condition is needed which is usually provided by housing the equipment in a chamber. Due to the top loading of containers into the chute with the machine described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,077,180, the housing to provide a sterile environment is quite large, complex and costly. In addition, maintenance of this type of machine is difficult because of the high levels to which the transport mechanism for the containers passes in positioning stacks of containers for loading into the tops of supply chutes for filling machines.